The Election Denial Is Coming from Inside the (White) House

This week, we published emails — first reported by CNN — that show top Trump administration officials met with election denial activists to find ways to change election procedures. Their proposals included strategies to use the Commerce Department’s authority to force states to stop using voting machines.

The emails show that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — who is often portrayed as a moderating voice in the White House — played a direct role in connecting Arkansas-based election conspiracy theorists Colonel Conrad Reynolds and Will Huff with senior Trump administration officials, including then-pardon attorney and Weaponization Working Group leader Ed Martin. When they met in August 2025, the Arkansas Board of Election Commissioners had already referred Reynolds to the state’s attorney general over allegations he violated state election law — he has since been charged in the matter. 

Huff later sent Martin a slate of proposals for overhauling how states run elections, including a plan to invoke the Commerce Department’s national security authority to force states to abandon voting machines in favor of “hand-marked and hand-counted ballots” ahead of the 2026 midterms. Reynolds and Huff reportedly also raised the proposal during a two-and-a-half hour meeting with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in August 2026.

“These records show just how deeply election denialism is embedded in the Trump administration,” our Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said. “The election deniers aren’t knocking at the door anymore. They’ve been invited inside. Their ideas are being elevated at the highest levels of the White House and increasingly shaping federal election policy.”

With the midterm elections approaching, the public deserves to know whether federal officials are taking cues on election policy from activists who have pushed unsubstantiated claims and, in at least one case, been criminally charged over their own conduct at the polls.

On the records

How rising food costs are harming Americans

According to a July Pew Research survey, 66 percent of Americans are very concerned about the cost of food and other consumer goods. As grocery prices rise, we’re investigating how Trump’s economic policies are leaving people behind.

• This week, Canada responded to the Trump administration’s tariffs with tariffs of its own — including  50% tariffs on American milk. Canada is one of the largest importers of U.S. dairy. We filed Freedom of Information Act requests to find out whether the Trump administration followed through on its promises to support farmers hurting from tariffs.
• Last year’s “Big Beautiful Bill” made deep cuts to SNAP, and enrollment in the program has since plummeted in Arizona, Florida, and South Carolina. To find out how officials are addressing this, we filed public records requests for communications among these states and food banks, the White House, and Congress. 

American Oversight in the news

• How Howard Lutnick’s Commerce Department became an unlikely engine of Trump’s election agenda (CNN)

Other stories we’re following

• Trump asks Supreme Court to revive controversial system used for voter purges (CNN)
• Trump administration makes another appeal to the Supreme Court to allow mail ballot restrictions (Associated Press)
• Canada imposes new tariffs on U.S. goods, as trade war intensifies (New York Times)
• DHS threatens pro-voting group over its voter registration research (Democracy Docket)